Not even a week after the five-year-long saga through American courts seemed settled, Apple is digging in its claws for an even longer fight. Last Wednesday, April 30, the courts once again struck down what’s essentially known as the Apple Tax, a 27-30% cut of revenue generated by apps sold or subscribed to through Apple’s App Store.
Proton blared the news that it would drop the price of its services up to 30%. Spotify outright gloated over the news.
Early in the morning on Monday, May 5, though, Apple signaled that it wasn’t ready to admit defeat. It filed an appeal to the judge’s ruling, virtually promising to drag this out even longer than our already stretched-thin attention spans can handle.
background on the apple tax
Back in 2020, Epic Games sued Apple over the 27-30% take, particularly irate over sharing that much profit of its wildly popular game, Fortnite. Apple forced developers to steer customers through its own App Store, where it would collect the cut, and away from other sources where customers could buy or subscribe directly from apps’ developers.
It all amounted to an anti-competitive practice, according to many app developers. And according to Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers, who ruled in 2021 that Apple had to give developers more of a chance to direct would-be buyers to purchasing options through avenues other than the App Store. Happy ending for developers, wasn’t it? Not exactly.
Apple continued on not quite as reformed and compliant as Gonzalez Rogers had apparently hoped for, and so on April 30, 2025, she ruled that Apple violated her order by not doing enough to halt the anti-competitive pricing measures that were supposed to have been enacted after the 2021 ruling. Apple listened up this time and nixed the 27-30% take.
Or so it seemed. Where will the next few months take us? With Apple’s deep pockets, they could drag this out, especially since there’s a lot of money at stake for them if they lose this appeal.
The post Apple Files Appeal To Keep From Having To Change App Store appeared first on VICE.
